A message from 
Rich Jones, Head.

“For an old rugby player, you are quite the hippy”

Well that was one of the more erudite comments from a couple of friends (and Heads) that I was talking to recently about today’s shenanigans at St Chris.

You see, I explained the plan of spelling out the word PEACE by the staff and students early this morning as a way of supporting the charity ‘Peace One Day’. So I smiled at the comment and decided to take it as a compliment, but wanted to check so I asked what they meant by ‘hippy’.

“Well you know, your school, promoting peace, being kind, individual choice, everyone is valued, all that stuff, bit hippy.” I thought that was pretty good.

From time to time, I have been asked to share the occasional Morning Talks that I do on a Monday and perhaps to give context to my new hippy status, this is from Monday and about Peace One Day.

I will now just change into my sandals: If you ever have the misfortune of coming into my office, you may well spy a picture of a young Rwandan girl called Christine. It is the only photo I have of Christine and bizarrely and sadly, it is the only photo of Christine that exists. I met Christine and her kid brother Derek on one of several trips I made to Uganda and Rwanda in the early 2000s. They instantly made me laugh. This was mainly because my parents are, or more accurately were, called Derek and Christine too, and it always amused me that I would travel to a pretty remote part of Rwanda and meet two kids with the same names.

Now Christine was a really funny kid and would often spend time with us, as I did some filming work there. She would shout “Mazungu Embebadeeba” and I can still hear it now her, and sometimes Derek, her brother, shouting out to our camp – Mazungu Embebadeeba (I think that’s right!).

I often thought that was going to be a lovely, sweet nickname for me but alas I was wrong. You see Mazungu meant ‘peeled skin’, and Embebadeeba roughly translates to a grumpy bear.

On my third visit to Rwanda, she didn’t come to see me, nor did Derek. I did go to their village but it had been abandoned. Eventually, I found out why.  Sadly, Christine had been killed by a mine, planted by rebels from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo two months prior on her way to school one morning. Derek wasn’t hurt but nobody had seen him in months. When Christine died, she was nine-and-a-half years old.

When we think of conflict, of war, we tend to think of tanks, soldiers and drone strikes, but in my own experience, it was of a nine-year-old girl who giggled a great deal and called me names, dying on a country road in the middle of nowhere, wearing her dusty ‘hand me down’ school uniform.

The sad reality is that conflict and war is everywhere.

As of last week, there are 84 wars and armed conflicts around the world:

• Middle East and North Africa – 45, including Syria, Western Sahara and Yemen
• Africa has 36 – including South Sudan, The DRC, Ethiopia and Senegal.
• Asia has 21 – including Afghanistan and the Philippines
• Europe has 7 including Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Moldova
• The Americas have 6 including Colombia, which has experienced the longest non-international, armed conflict in modern times.

I imagine there are literally thousands of Christines, in every single one of those conflicts. So why am I telling you this? Because of the organisation Peace One Day.

St Chris has a long relationship with this charity and for years the Junior School have been actively supporting the charity and now, Lizzie Hedderson, Assistant Head (Pupil Development and Wellbeing), quite rightly, wants the Senior School to be part of that drive.

Let me explain what Peace One Day is about:
Started in 2001, the UK based charity attempts to ensure that the 21 September is a day of genuine world peace. There has been continual armed conflict on our planet, consistently, since records began. There has not been a single recorded day of non-conflict, ever in history. EVER.

Peace One Day has been attempting make the 21 September as a significant day of peace. Have they been successful? No, they have not. Very rarely though they get closer.

• In 2007, in Afghanistan, Peace One Day's collaboration with UN agencies resulted in a ceasefire observed by all parties, including the Taliban. The Taliban itself met with the charity and confirmed its ceasefire, for a day.

Now not only were there no shots fired, no bombs dropped, no torture, executions or raids, it meant something else. The nature of war means that supplies, food and medicine can’t get into war zones. With the Afghan ceasefire, this allowed Oxfam to get 4.5 million children in Afghanistan vaccinated against polio due to the agreements. This saved, literally, millions of lives.

• In 2014, Peace One Day launched a three-year project in the Great Lakes region of Africa. The goal was to raise awareness of Peace Day and encourage all sectors of society in the region to stand together in the name of peace on 21 September. This happened and countless lives were saved, and urgent supplies brought in and children evacuated.
• In 2016, after several years work with global consulting firm McKinsey, it was estimated that 2.2 billion people had been exposed to the Peace Day message, that 940 million were aware of the day and that 16 million behaved more peacefully as a result on that day. 16 million – that is a lot.

Whilst it may appear like a fantasy idea, one idealist notion and something that will be impossible to achieve…then what I have just said, means it’s not.

One of the things I love about this charity is its consistency in failure. Huge swathes of people have pledged to be non-violent; governments, terrorist groups, warlords and warring factions have all laid down arms. Nevertheless, huge swathes still ignore it, but with more pressure – they might not do…

Is this 21 September going to be peaceful? No, probably not- but it might be in the future.
Could there be a collective approach, from all of us, to change something?

You see, for the charity, as much as they want that day, a day where no guns fire, no one gets displaced, nobody is orphaned and supplies and support get through, they want something else equally as powerful.

They want the WILL for it to be there.
They want AWARENESS to be there.
They want and NEED collective support, to get collective action, which will get the guns to stop.

We at St Chris are not going to meet the warlords and rebel fighters from some far away regime…but we are going to support and be aware of the power of peace…

The charity’s goal for this year, for Peace One Day, is that by 2025 they will reach three billion people with the message of peace.

So we are going to do our bit too – not just for all the soldiers and displaced adults but for all those Christines that are everywhere in this world.

Tomorrow will be important and I hope you can support that message of peace.

Now we will have our silence.

Your ideas.

Welcome to our Community Board! Last week we asked the Interesting Question:

"What makes a school's curriculum good?"

Here are your responses below:

• Helen said: "Access to the Arts - music and drama lessons."
• Lucy said: "For it to be well rounded and all encompassing. Not only with academic subjects but subjects that help you grow from a child into an adolescent with knowledge and confidence."